Abstract
Quantum biological electron transfer (ET) essentially involves in virtually all important biological processes such as photosynthesis, cellular respiration, DNA repair, cellular homeostasis, and cell death. However, there is no real-time imaging method to capture biological electron tunnelling in live cells to date. Here, we report a quantum biological electron tunnelling (QBET) junction and its application in real-time optical detection of QBET and the dynamics of ET in mitochondrial cytochrome c during cell life and death process. QBET junctions permit to see the behaviours of electron tunnelling through barrier molecules with different barrier widths. Using QBET spectroscopy, we optically capture real-time ET in cytochrome c redox dynamics during cellular apoptosis and necrosis in living cells. The non-invasive real-time QBET spectroscopic imaging of ET in live cell open a new era in life sciences and medicine by providing a way to capture spatiotemporal ET dynamics and to reveal the quantum biological mechanisms.
Highlights
Quantum biological electron transfer (ET) essentially involves in virtually all important biological processes such as photosynthesis, cellular respiration, DNA repair, cellular homeostasis, and cell death
We demonstrated the experimental evidence of quantum electron tunneling in the junction, and pioneering biological experiments using the quantum biological electron tunnelling (QBET) junction as a biological reporter to distinguish the ET dynamics in the processes of cellular apoptosis and necrosis
The results demonstrate that QBET junction spectroscopy is a powerful method to detect the oxidative state from the reductive state of cytochrome c (Cyt c), dynamics of ET, and its ability to report the relative concentration of Cyt c through the depth of the quantised resonant dips
Summary
Quantum biological electron transfer (ET) essentially involves in virtually all important biological processes such as photosynthesis, cellular respiration, DNA repair, cellular homeostasis, and cell death. Using electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) method, Tan et al recently described ET across the MTJs at length scales in the quantum gap (0.4–1.3 nm)[29] All these previous methods are excellent demonstrations for validating ETs via tunnel junctions with an applied bias voltage. They are not suitable for visualising quantum biological ET in living molecules within live cells due to the wiring problem of electrodes on molecules[16,17,18,22,23,24] or large scale of metallic substrates[27], which are unfeasible for inserting into cells. EELS-based quantum plasmonic detection method cannot be applied for live cells imaging due to the highenergy of the electron beam[29]
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